Speaker 1: Welcome to This Country Life. I'm your host, Brent Reeves
Speaker 1: from coon hunting to trot lining and just general country living.
Speaker 1: I want you to stay a while as I share
Speaker 1: my stories and the country skills that will help you
Speaker 1: beat the system. This Country Life is proudly presented as
Speaker 1: part of Meat Eater's podcast network, bringing you the best
Speaker 1: outdoor podcast the airways have to offer. All right, friends,
Speaker 1: pull you up a chair or drop that tailgate. I
Speaker 1: think I got a thing or two. The Teacher Mississippi
Speaker 1: River expedition back in January, me and Clayton Newcombe, you know,
Speaker 1: the mule Man, extraordinary and questionable Meat Eater Turkey calling
Speaker 1: contest winner, that guy, Well, we purposely acquired a boat
Speaker 1: and enough possible to zip down the mighty Mississippi on
Speaker 1: a two one hundred and fifty mile trek to hunt fish.
Speaker 1: I'm going to tell you some stuff on how that
Speaker 1: all got started, But first I'm going to tell you
Speaker 1: a story. Since a boat was a major fixture on
Speaker 1: our most recently aired adventure, here's a story about one
Speaker 1: I've owned several over the years, and while at present
Speaker 1: I can temporarily be counted among the boatless boats and
Speaker 1: I have a storied partnership. Lots of my misadventures that
Speaker 1: I've detailed on here have involved boats, everything from nearly
Speaker 1: buying the farm on the Arkansas River during a severe
Speaker 1: thunderstorm to sitting in the heat of summer on Lake
Speaker 1: Chico eating sardines for breakfast, or unintentionally mooning an elderly
Speaker 1: couple as my brother and I swam like Tarzan Minus's
Speaker 1: loincloth at Bug Island on the Saline River. But a
Speaker 1: boat boat was and remains important to me. I like them.
Speaker 1: I like to use them doing the things I like
Speaker 1: to do, whether it's catching fish or gigging frogs, or
Speaker 1: chasing animals to feed me and my family. Some folks
Speaker 1: say that boat boat stands for bust out another thousand,
Speaker 1: referencing the cost of upkeep on a boat. Now, I
Speaker 1: have found that the more you use one, the cheaper
Speaker 1: it is to operate, especially the smaller boats that I've
Speaker 1: had my experience with. That may be true with party
Speaker 1: barges and big skier bass boats, but my minimalist approach
Speaker 1: to the boats that I've owned have always been pretty simplistic.
Speaker 1: I want to be safe, stay dry, and not paddle
Speaker 1: where I'm going I don't ever recall turning a boat over,
Speaker 1: dangerously swamping one, or having a wreck of any significance,
Speaker 1: by which I mean at all. I've never been one
Speaker 1: who wanted to go faster than what I consider to
Speaker 1: be safe, even in the ignorance of my youth or
Speaker 1: last week. My dad taught me at an early age.
Speaker 1: We were brim fishing on the lake and he said, son,
Speaker 1: you have got to be careful out here. There's more
Speaker 1: water on the outside of this boat than you can
Speaker 1: safely drink to save yourself should you fall in it. Well,
Speaker 1: I never forgot that I love the water. I ain't
Speaker 1: scared of it, but I respect it. And there were
Speaker 1: times when you could question that last statement, and here's
Speaker 1: one of them. Opening the day of the last split
Speaker 1: of duck season, right after Christmas in the early nineties,
Speaker 1: an acquaintance of mine wanted to go hunting with me
Speaker 1: and Tim. Tim's my older brother and my duck hunting partner,
Speaker 1: and we took him to Cane Creek Lake near Star City, Arkansas.
Speaker 1: He was a large lad, not obese, just a big human.
Speaker 1: If y'all been keeping scoring through the podcast, that's the
Speaker 1: spot where I nearly got driven into the green like
Speaker 1: one of John Henry's railroad spikes into a crosstie when
Speaker 1: a big snag broke off that I was standing beside
Speaker 1: and almost fell on me. It's also the place that
Speaker 1: I killed my first duck, long before it was a
Speaker 1: public lake. If you hadn't heard those stories, skip back
Speaker 1: to episode one seventy one of This Country Life Ducks,
Speaker 1: Trees and Danger, and catch up with the rest of
Speaker 1: the class. Anyway, we were early to the boat ramp
Speaker 1: that morning and it was cold. Anything that had water
Speaker 1: on it or in it was frozen, including the fuel
Speaker 1: line going from the gas tank to the nine to
Speaker 1: nine horsepower motor that belonged to our acquaintance. Now, I
Speaker 1: don't recall the circumstances of why we were using his boat.
Speaker 1: Obviously Tim and I neither one of them had seen
Speaker 1: it before, or we'd have been using one of ores.
Speaker 1: It was twelve feet long and thirty six inches wide.
Speaker 1: I wonder how they figured the passenger capacity on a boat. Well,
Speaker 1: wonder no more. You multiply the length of the boat
Speaker 1: times the width and divide it by fifteen. The answer
Speaker 1: is the number of people your boat is rated for now,
Speaker 1: here's something that seems important to add. The person that
Speaker 1: equation is referring to is a human being that weighs
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty pounds. So doing a little more
Speaker 1: math and channleeng my most favorite math teacher of all
Speaker 1: time as Brenda McDougall. If we could multiply three times twelve,
Speaker 1: we get thirty six. You divide thirty six by fifteen,
Speaker 1: you get two point four. So that meant our boat
Speaker 1: was rated for two point four humans that weighed one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty pounds. Two point four humans. That's a ratio, opie,
Speaker 1: and we're taking in fishing. If you're younger than forty,
Speaker 1: you ain't getting that joke. But watch season one, episode
Speaker 1: d Eat of The Andy Griffith Show and you will.
Speaker 1: Moving on, our boat was rated for three hundred and
Speaker 1: sixty pounds, and that's not counting the gear we was told,
Speaker 1: just the items that don't float without assistance and breathe. There.
Speaker 1: We were all above that one hundred and fifty pound average,
Speaker 1: way above it. And we had a giant bag of
Speaker 1: decoys other items plus shotguns and shells. Sketchy, but we
Speaker 1: were there to go duck hunting and duck hunting, we
Speaker 1: would go, except the motor wouldn't start with water in
Speaker 1: the fuel line. We removed the fuel line and melted
Speaker 1: the ice from the inside. Now, don't ask me how
Speaker 1: I did that, because only having y'all think of me
Speaker 1: as a complete idiot is good enough without me confirming
Speaker 1: it for you. Let's just say that Tim used to smoke,
Speaker 1: and did so when this story took place. Thankfully, he
Speaker 1: quit a long time ago. And if we were faced
Speaker 1: with that same situation now as we were, then I'd
Speaker 1: be unable to borrow the item from him that I
Speaker 1: used to thaw off that fuel line. Now, if you
Speaker 1: think that was dumb, get a load of this. With
Speaker 1: the fuel line thawed, empty of water, reconnected and prime
Speaker 1: with fuel, we fired that little nine nine Johnson up
Speaker 1: and it was purred like a kitten. When Tim and
Speaker 1: I stood on opposite sides of that boat, as our
Speaker 1: captain sat at the helm. We had a huge bag
Speaker 1: of decoys, three shotguns, ammo boxes full of shells, a
Speaker 1: grub box full of snacks, and enough coffee to wash
Speaker 1: a car with between us. Left little room for a
Speaker 1: matching set of exercise. Professional duck killers like me and Tim,
Speaker 1: so we climbed in at the same time, with each
Speaker 1: of our inboard legs and two thirds of what was
Speaker 1: attached to them inside the boat. As we lay flat
Speaker 1: along the gunwales of the boat, our outboard knees were
Speaker 1: hanging overboard and skimming the surface of the water. That
Speaker 1: boat struggled to stay afloat. Now we had less than
Speaker 1: three quarters of a mile ago from the boat ramp
Speaker 1: to the spot we had picked out, and in one
Speaker 1: of our boats, it would have taken about three minutes
Speaker 1: to get there from the time we unloaded until we
Speaker 1: were chucking out decoys at the spot. But the brain
Speaker 1: trust of what would become the dynamic duo of duck
Speaker 1: guides that formed Southern Waterfowler's Guide Service were laying on
Speaker 1: the edge of a boat that was rated for one
Speaker 1: and a half of the people that were currently occupying it.
Speaker 1: I just read that sentence out loud, and while visualizing
Speaker 1: that memory, I automatically heard the tune Dumb Ways to
Speaker 1: Die playing in the background. It could have been the
Speaker 1: theme song on so many of our exploits, but as
Speaker 1: fate would have it, we all lived. I remember going
Speaker 1: to the hole that morning before daylight, half hanging out
Speaker 1: of that boat with my inboard hands squeezing the sugar
Speaker 1: out of the straps in that decoy bag that I
Speaker 1: was going to use. Is my life jacket should the
Speaker 1: boat decide to give in too physics and try to
Speaker 1: kill us. And I felt guilty about it after we
Speaker 1: got there. It was selfish of me to think that
Speaker 1: I was going to be holding a decoy back should
Speaker 1: be turned over. What about my brother? I wasn't even
Speaker 1: concerned about the other guy. Well, I mean I was,
Speaker 1: but not near as much as my brother. We killed
Speaker 1: some ducks a limit, as I recall, and haphazardly made
Speaker 1: our way back to the boat ramp the same way
Speaker 1: we went out there. Tim and I both laid on
Speaker 1: the edge of the boat on opposite sides that was
Speaker 1: cutting through the cold water at the break next speeed
Speaker 1: of whatever a nine to nine Johnson could manage, pushing
Speaker 1: seven hundred pounds of dumbness across the lake with barely
Speaker 1: four inches of freeboard sticking above the water line. Now,
Speaker 1: when we coasted to the boat ramp, Tim and I
Speaker 1: both rolled out of that little boat, once again, planting
Speaker 1: our feet on the safety of the concrete no longer
Speaker 1: at the mercy of aluminum unsteadiness, the bowzover that was driving,
Speaker 1: or the two more ons that went along for the ride.
Speaker 1: The boat captain walked up the bank to get his
Speaker 1: truck and trailer while Tim and I stood at the
Speaker 1: water's edge holding the boat to keep it from floating away.
Speaker 1: I looked at my brother and I said, Tim, were
Speaker 1: you scared when we were coming out and you could
Speaker 1: see how close the water was to the top of
Speaker 1: the boat. He said, I didn't like it, but I
Speaker 1: really was not scared. I got to be honest with you, Brent.
Speaker 1: I didn't know what you had planned, but I had
Speaker 1: a hold of that decoy bag on the way out
Speaker 1: there this morning and on the way back, and I
Speaker 1: knew if that boat went down, I was taking it
Speaker 1: with me. And that's just how that happened. In the
Speaker 1: late spring of twenty twenty three, I got a call
Speaker 1: from Clay that went something like that is camera man,
Speaker 1: Brent reeves what you're doing. After all these years, I
Speaker 1: still how I'm listed in his contacts. Anyway, For those
Speaker 1: of us who get those calls from Clay, we know
Speaker 1: that the reaction to and how you respond is very important.
Speaker 1: There's no telling where this conversation comes from or where
Speaker 1: it'll end up, so you got to measure your response
Speaker 1: before you inadvertently commit to some ridiculous project he's dreamed up,
Speaker 1: probably after waking up in the barn lot after one
Speaker 1: of his musics kicked him into sleepy town. But I
Speaker 1: could tell we were going somewhere. I just didn't know
Speaker 1: where or how soon, And I usually respond with something
Speaker 1: akin to where we're going. Whatever my response was, he
Speaker 1: followed it up with I want me and you to
Speaker 1: put a boat in the Mississippi River at Memphis and
Speaker 1: hunt and fish our way down to Vicksburg probably takes
Speaker 1: seven to nine days, depending on what we get into.
Speaker 1: I immediately flashed through a lit lifetime of navigating up
Speaker 1: and down the Arkansas River and all the perils me
Speaker 1: and my brother encountered with just me and him, and
Speaker 1: also the scores of people that we guided for and
Speaker 1: transported in boats in good and terrible weather, and awaghed
Speaker 1: those near death experiences against all the times that we
Speaker 1: got off the river alive with all our charges. Pretty
Speaker 1: sure i'd remembered it if we'd lost anyone or each other.
Speaker 1: And since none immediately sprang to mind. I responded with
Speaker 1: why stop at Vicksburg. The cough is better in New Orleans.
Speaker 1: He said, yeah, Man, I like it, And from that
Speaker 1: conversation the plan was in action. It would also be
Speaker 1: the easiest part of the whole expedition. Shortly after that
Speaker 1: initial conversation, I was surfing the web and ran across
Speaker 1: the cliff of President Kennedy giving one of the most
Speaker 1: motivational speeches about the space program when he said, we
Speaker 1: choose to go to the moon. We choose to go
Speaker 1: to the Moon in this decade and do the other
Speaker 1: things not because they are easy, but because they're hard,
Speaker 1: because that goal was served to organize and measure the
Speaker 1: best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is
Speaker 1: one that we are willing to accept, one we are
Speaker 1: unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
Speaker 1: And others too. Now watching that after Clay in my conversation,
Speaker 1: what I heard him say was when he said we
Speaker 1: was Britain, Clay, and when he said Moon, it was
Speaker 1: Mississippi River, plain as day. I was all in. But
Speaker 1: Arkansas ain't the big money. The differences in them was
Speaker 1: like the difference between the small saline river that I
Speaker 1: grew up on that I could swim from one side
Speaker 1: to the other and back right now, compared to the
Speaker 1: bigger Arkansas River. I respected them all, but the Mississippi
Speaker 1: would have a whole new set of challenges compared to
Speaker 1: the Arkansas. Most notably would be the amount of barge traffic,
Speaker 1: a that into the mix that the river was at
Speaker 1: an historically low level, significantly narrowed the river to mostly
Speaker 1: operating within the channel markers every boat out there, including
Speaker 1: the barges. That meant we would all be in close
Speaker 1: proximity of each other, and they traveled constantly up and
Speaker 1: down the river, and we wouldn't be able to skirt
Speaker 1: to the outside edges of the channel, giving them and
Speaker 1: us a whole lot more room to operate. It wasn't
Speaker 1: going to happen, not on this trip. Now. People do
Speaker 1: it every day, but most of those folks are more
Speaker 1: experienced than I am, even with over a quarter of
Speaker 1: a century of running up and down the Arkansas, which
Speaker 1: has an average flow rate of one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand gallons a second. As far as I know, the
Speaker 1: boat we would wind up with would be one of
Speaker 1: the largest boats Clay's ever been on, and one hundred
Speaker 1: percent the biggest one he would ever drive. And we
Speaker 1: were going to do it on the Mississippi River, a
Speaker 1: river that averages almost one point six million gallons per second,
Speaker 1: more than ten times that of the Arkansas. We were
Speaker 1: going to need a bigger boat, and they left it
Speaker 1: up to me to find one. Other than deciding I
Speaker 1: wanted to do this adventure, picking a boat was the
Speaker 1: easiest thing I did. It's got to be a Sea
Speaker 1: ARC boat. Clay's like, you know everybody down there, and
Speaker 1: I said, no, but they're in Southeast Arkansas. I used
Speaker 1: to have an office in Model Cellar, where they are located.
Speaker 1: I'm from Southeast Arkansas. These are my people, and I
Speaker 1: will know someone there soon enough. Clay just fired off
Speaker 1: a generic email to the customer service desk at Sea Arc.
Speaker 1: In short order, we had a meeting scheduled and done,
Speaker 1: and I would eventually drive to the boat plant to
Speaker 1: see the boat being built for us to use on
Speaker 1: the trip. I can't say enough good things about Steve Henderson,
Speaker 1: the president of Sea Arc. He more or less said,
Speaker 1: just tell us what you want and we'll do it.
Speaker 1: He then introduced us to Jesse Carr Wright and John
Speaker 1: ed Row, both of them i'd worked closely with over
Speaker 1: the next few months designing a boat for what we
Speaker 1: need on this grand adventure that we were planning. Now,
Speaker 1: my contributions to the boat design was limited to asking
Speaker 1: questions and deferring to the experts of John ed and Jesse.
Speaker 1: But I'd been stewing on an idea for a color,
Speaker 1: and I finally asked John ed hey, man, what's the
Speaker 1: chances of getting this thing wrapped in first? Like cash camel? Now,
Speaker 1: let me tell you this. Don't ask them folks to
Speaker 1: do something that you don't mean, because they're going to
Speaker 1: find a way to get it done. And they did.
Speaker 1: They invited me to come down and visit the plant
Speaker 1: and see our boat in the very beginning stage. Is
Speaker 1: when it was just a big flat piece of aluminum
Speaker 1: that to me looked like a big flat piece of aluminum.
Speaker 1: That's what I saw. But those folks, and they saw
Speaker 1: a whole lot more. What I was smart enough to
Speaker 1: see was a group of people working in Southeast Arkansas
Speaker 1: in August fabricating metal in an environment that's knocking induce
Speaker 1: of the cool temperatures As a matter of fact, it
Speaker 1: was hot in there, but the vibe that was cool.
Speaker 1: They took me around to the different stages of boat building,
Speaker 1: and I got to meet the people that Steve and
Speaker 1: John ed and Jesse bragged on from the moment we
Speaker 1: came to them with the idea of using the sea
Speaker 1: arc boat. Those folks were working hard, and it was
Speaker 1: special to me to see the obvious pride in the
Speaker 1: craftsmanship that these men and women were putting into the
Speaker 1: boats that they'd never set foot on. To me, I
Speaker 1: made it just all the more special. I told some
Speaker 1: of them that would slow down long enough to talk
Speaker 1: to me about why I was there and what we
Speaker 1: were planning to do with their boat man. In some
Speaker 1: places there was noise in there, but they all smiled
Speaker 1: and nodded and gave me a thumbs up or a
Speaker 1: few words of encouragement. It was good, and I was
Speaker 1: thankful for the opportunity to meet them, every one of them.
Speaker 1: A big majority of them were from where I'm from,
Speaker 1: and a lot of us had mutual friends before I
Speaker 1: left that day. Our mutual friends list would get a
Speaker 1: lot bigger. By now, most of you have probably seen
Speaker 1: our film on the media or YouTube channel of our
Speaker 1: Mississippi River expedition. If you hadn't, you better stop now
Speaker 1: slide over there watch it last chance if you don't
Speaker 1: want to know what happens, because I'm fixing to talk
Speaker 1: about it. In five four three we killed one duck,
Speaker 1: one hog, and three deer and had one heck of
Speaker 1: a time. Now, there's not a lot of behind the
Speaker 1: scenes stuff that we didn't talk about in the film,
Speaker 1: But that boat, my gosh, that Sea Arc boat was
Speaker 1: an absolute fortress. We were in some pretty nasty cold
Speaker 1: rain on the last leg of our trail, but Clay,
Speaker 1: our cinematographer is Isaac Neil, and drew stick line, me
Speaker 1: and all our gear we stayed safe and dry. Once
Speaker 1: we hit the bank between Greenville and Vicksburg, Mississippi, the
Speaker 1: hunt was on. Our cat fishing plans got canceled when
Speaker 1: the windy weather got so bad that it was unsafe
Speaker 1: to be on the water. Luckily that happened after we
Speaker 1: made it to Thad Miller's hunting camp where we were staying.
Speaker 1: Our friends Jordan Blissed and Lake Pickle, a couple of
Speaker 1: Mississippi boys that know how to gather groceries from the
Speaker 1: woods pointed us in the right direction, and we concentrated
Speaker 1: on chasing deer. Once we saw that the ducks just
Speaker 1: hadn't made it down in enough numbers to be predictable
Speaker 1: on where they were going to be hanging out. Deer
Speaker 1: hunt every day all day. Okay, I'm in, And we did,
Speaker 1: and we fought the wind. My goodness, we hunted in
Speaker 1: wind that had I been at home, I would have
Speaker 1: rolled over and went back to sleep. And it picked
Speaker 1: up nearly every day. The day I shot that Mississippi buck,
Speaker 1: the wind was blowing sustained above twenty miles per hour
Speaker 1: and gusting up to forty bow hunting was really out
Speaker 1: of the question where I was, but we didn't want
Speaker 1: to leave because we were consistently seeing deer, good deer.
Speaker 1: Now that's a lesson for me. When the rut is on,
Speaker 1: all the rules go out the window on what deer
Speaker 1: gonna do in reference to weather except be unpredictable. Drew
Speaker 1: Stecklon and I was hanging in tree saddles about twenty
Speaker 1: feet off the ground, and the wind was whooping on
Speaker 1: us like we were rented mules. He saw the buck first,
Speaker 1: and I thought I'd had to pass on him because
Speaker 1: I could never get my rifles settled in on the
Speaker 1: right spot. Then I said, for a miracle, everything came
Speaker 1: together for one split second and was like that rifle
Speaker 1: fired itself. Bingo riding the baller room. I'd have lost
Speaker 1: money on betting whether we were going to see any
Speaker 1: deer that day, and in reality, we didn't see many.
Speaker 1: We also didn't sit long because before nine am that morning,
Speaker 1: Drew and I were bailing out of that tree to
Speaker 1: go hunt up a blood trail. It was an incredible
Speaker 1: adventure from start to finish. We left men Us at
Speaker 1: the beginning, headed down the river, slept under the stars
Speaker 1: on an island. We persevered through bad weather and wet
Speaker 1: and cold conditions and stuck it out. Because a lot
Speaker 1: of folks had gone to a lot of trouble to
Speaker 1: help us see this crazy idea become a reality. We
Speaker 1: owed it to every one of them and to ourselves
Speaker 1: to see it through. We rolled out of Mississippi after
Speaker 1: a week with some new friends and an ice chest
Speaker 1: full of tasty critters. I'm going back to this spring
Speaker 1: to try and put the old razzle dazzle on dealth
Speaker 1: the long beard, and I'll keep you updated on how
Speaker 1: that goes. If you hadn't watched the film yet, get
Speaker 1: yourself over there and check it out. I think you'll
Speaker 1: enjoy it. I know we had a great time working
Speaker 1: on it. They're still tickets available at the Meat Eater
Speaker 1: Live Tour. I know they need to come down south.
Speaker 1: Y'all just keep holding their feet to the fire and
Speaker 1: we'll see if we can make it happen. I like
Speaker 1: our chances. In the meantime, I know we have lots
Speaker 1: of friends out west, and that's where the tour is
Speaker 1: headed in a few weeks. You can find all the
Speaker 1: information on when and where at the meeteater dot com
Speaker 1: slash events. Thank y'all so much for listening and for
Speaker 1: those who voted early and often for yours truly in
Speaker 1: the calling contest during Meat Eater's Turkey week Man. That
Speaker 1: was a lot of fun. Until next week. This is
Speaker 1: Brent Reeves signing off. Y'all be careful.